There are many types of solid cosmetic sticks that are commercially available or otherwise known in the various arts. These cosmetic sticks include products such as moisturizers, perfumes or fragrances, skin conditioners, antiperspirants, anti-wrinkle products, pharmaceuticals, deodorants, make-up and foundations, sunscreens, and many other products intended for topical application to the skin. Many of these products contain a cosmetic active dispersed within a suitable liquid carrier and contained within a solid gellant or wax matrix that provides the product with sufficient hardness to form a solid stick composition. In addition to providing sufficient product hardness, the solid gellant or wax matrix also acts to contain the liquid carrier and any other liquid ingredients sufficiently to prevent syneresis of such liquids from the product form prior to application.
Wax gellants such as stearyl alcohol and other fatty alcohols are especially common in commercially available cosmetic products such as antiperspirant and deodorant sticks. These waxes typically provide a stable solid matrix within which the antiperspirant or other active and a liquid carrier can be contained with minimal or no liquid syneresis during storage. Other gellants such as triglyceride gellants have also been used in solid antiperspirant or other cosmetic sticks, due in large part to the lower raw material cost associated with the use of natural triglycerides. Many of these gellants, however, are used at relatively high concentrations to provide the stick with the desired product hardness, but such high gellant concentrations can increase raw material costs and can increased visible residue on the skin after application.
It has now been found that cosmetic sticks containing triglyceride gellants can be formulated with lower triglyceride gellant concentrations and still provide the cosmetic sticks with the desired product hardness. This is accomplished by formulating the stick composition with solid polymorphic triglycerides, wherein the polymorphic form of the gellant as formulated into the solid stick is substantially free of long range crystalline order. It has been found that by formulating these triglyceride gellants without long range crystalline order, that the product so formulated has improved product hardness at lower gellant concentrations.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a solid cosmetic stick composition that contains reduced triglyceride gellant concentrations that provide the composition with improved product hardness and low residue performance. It is a further object of the present invention to formulate such a composition with a triglyceride gellant that is substantially free of long range crystalline order of the triglyceride gellant material.